


Tahi ake ake

by letosatie



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Even with the death, Fairy Tale Style, Happy Ending, M/M, honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:18:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letosatie/pseuds/letosatie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fairy tale with a Maori fairy (Patu paiarehe) set in Auckland in 1907-1915.  Charles is a sickly child and can't attend school, but every afternoon Raven and Erik visit him in his garden.  He gets a chance to go to the fairy world where he will be well, but it means leaving Erik behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tahi ake ake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luninosity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/gifts).



> Wah moi should be read as waah moy. It's a Chinese preserved plum that tastes salty, tart and a bit sweet.
> 
> Maori translations at the end.

In the afternoons, Charles had visitors. There was always two hours with the tutor after dinner, Charles was ten years old but considered too unwell to attend school with other children, then, Wiremu carried him out to the gazebo where Nanny set up his tea tray. They were always surprised at the good amount he ate at tea, and he never told them it wasn’t him who devoured the tiny sandwiches, the preserves and cream with scones and the cakes. Nobody had time to take tea with him, Nanny and Wiremu had chores, Mother went visiting and Father was working at the University, but Charles liked it better this way for, after he watched Nanny’s jiggly back wend back to the house, instantly Raven or Erik would emerge from their respective sides of the garden, often simultaneously.

Erik, Charles knew, had not actually appeared out of nowhere, although that was the illusion; a shake of the feijoa hedge and the sandy brown head pushed through, followed by the lanky, all feet and elbows, frame of his friend. Erik had trekked from school, cutting through the University, before slipping into Charles’ garden.

Raven had, in fact, appeared out of thin air, having crossed some sort of portal from Mau mau paki, where many of the Patu paiarehe lived, and which hid the melding point of this land and the fairy world, into the hollow tree at the base of the Xavier’s rose promenade.

“I thought all you Patu paiarehe stayed in the thick bush on the highest mountains,” Erik said, one day, around a cucumber sandwich.

“That’s only because it’s easier to evade you annoying taangata up there,” replied the fairy.

“You visit us,” Charles pointed out.

Raven shrugged. “You feed me,” she said, and put an unearthly amount of ginger cake in her mouth.

Erik always brought a treat. Somedays a paw paw, or an orange, some days an apple for each of them. On special days, he also brought wah moi and they took turns sucking on the dried, salted plum. Charles didn’t figure out, for two shaming years, what Erik did to come by those treats and Erik never intended to reveal how he got up early and went to Ah Chee’s Importers and Market Garden, before school. There, he loaded crates with fruit and vegetables, ready for the carts, to trade for something to make Charles’ eyes twinkle, something to bring colour to the sickly boy’s cheeks.

Raven brought nothing over, not even clothes. She visited naked, sometimes in feathers, sometimes her pale skin form but most often blue and scaled because the boys liked it best. Once a decent amount of cake had been inhaled, she spent the afternoons entertaining Charles and Erik by altering her look, dancing or telling stories of the demigods, Tawhaki and Maui.

Charles read aloud from Just So Stories or Seven Little Australians. He had an admirable library, which was a fair way to balance out the parental neglect, but also helped as there was a terrifying focus on academic pursuits, because his father was a professor at the University of Auckland and it was thought impossible for Charles to achieve anything of the physical. “The boy’s health...” the adults said, in hushed tones, and “...his fortunate gift of brains,” they said, a great deal louder.

Mostly, Erik and Raven filled Charles’ afternoons with laughter; Raven was a champion trickster and Erik saved up all the jokes from the school yard to present, importantly, to his audience. On Charles’ weaker days, the others were respectfully languid, and Erik read to him.

There were days of outright pain, the frequency of which increased at a horrifying rate. Some days, all Erik could do was hold him and sing, Raven hovering with a quilt and sharing frightened glances with Erik over Charles’ head. 

One afternoon, Nanny hadn’t even reached the house when Raven darted out from behind the pohutakawa tree. She was spilling over her own feet and spitting out excitement.

“Mokopuna,” she cried, scooping up Charles’ hand. “I’ve such news.”

“What is it?” he responded, squeezing her blue hand back.

“The kaumaatua have offered you a place. You can cross over with me and leave this failing body behind. You’ll never have to feel pain again and you'll live forever in the secret land behind this whenua.”

“Oh Raven,” breathed Charles.

“It’s beautiful in fairy, Moko. You’ll be iwi-atua, one of the supernatural beings, and you’ll be whole and well. We can dance together.”

“What about Erik?”

Raven frowned. “He can’t come; there’s no cause. And... I traded all my favours to secure your place.”

“Well, we can visit him. Will he recognise me?”

“Oh no Moko, you can’t. I’m thousands of years old, that’s why I can dance between the worlds, but you won’t be able to... not ‘til... he’s mortal...”

The feijoa hedge rustled and Erik came through holding a curious specimen. It was brown and yellow and knobbly with spiky, green hair.

“What is that, Erik?” Charles called to him.

“It’s a pineapple,” Erik replied, in his shuffling way. He folded himself down at Charles’ feet, pulled his utility knife out of his back pocket and began to cut away the rough exterior.

“Pineapple is yellow and shaped like circles. We had it on a cake last month, remember?” protested Raven.

“Just watch,” said Erik. He held up the green spikes, successfully scalped in one piece. Raven grabbed them and wore it as a hat to dance around in while Erik gradually exposed the yellow marrow.

“And how many carts did you have to load to trade for that, my friend?” said Charles.

“It doesn’t matter,” mumbled Erik, sawing at his gift.

Charles reached down and brushed the tawny hair back from Erik’s line of sight, left his hand capping the head. He looked up at Raven, collarbone flushed and heart pounding, and asked, “With respect, Raven, can you get your favours back?”

She smiled at him, a little sadly, a lot proudly, and nodded.

The pineapple was a magical mixture of tart and sweet. It tasted like warm breezes and opulent kisses from the sun and nights with no hidden monsters. The boys and the Patu paiarehe ate all the edible parts and licked the juice off their fingers and their chins for ten minutes afterwards.

Then, Raven climbed into Charles’ lap for a cuddle, and said, ”I might not be able to visit for a while.” She looked at Erik. “You’ll take care of him,” and it wasn’t quite a question, and it wasn’t quite a threat.

“Yes,” he said, serious as a last breath.

Raven touched her nose to each of theirs, a hongi, a shared breath, and ran to her tree.

 

One day, years after they last saw Raven, Erik struggled through the hedge. He was broad shouldered now, a weave of wiry muscle. Charles was also stronger, the painful days few and far between, but he was still shorter, pale and unable to walk unassisted. Erik, despite that, always regarded him as if he were the magical creature.

“What have we to read today, Charles?” was his careless greeting. They’d left behind Barrie, Baum and Stevenson, instead reading Plato, Thomas Hunt Morgan and William Gilbert. Erik was due to study the sciences under Charles’ father in the coming year.

“What have you brought me to eat?” was Charles’ riposte.

Erik sunk to the ground by Charles’ feet, graceful now he was no longer fighting against the weight of his own quick growing bones. He dug into his waistcoat pocket and brought out a wah moi. Charles snatched it, peeled off the paper wrapper, popped it in his mouth and sucked happily, finally handing Erik the borrowed study.

“Charles,” Erik said, his voice low and catching, “it’s Josiah Willard Gibbs.”

“I thought you’d like that, my friend,” said Charles, taking the wah moi out of his mouth and offering it to Erik.

“I do,” he said, and absently received the proffered plum. He flipped the bundle of papers open, too entranced to notice the avid way Charles was watching him press the dried fruit past nimble lips. Charles found himself swallowing when Erik did, the threat of something delicious scurrying down his spine. 

Erik held the treat out to Charles, saying, “I’ll start.” He began to read about free energy function. Charles took the wah moi, shivering when their fingers touched during the transfer. Erik paused, looking up with a frown, “Are you all right, Charles?”

“Yes?”

Erik raised an eyebrow at him but dropped his gaze to keep reading. Charles was certain he could taste Erik over the sweet, salty flavour. 

“Can I finish it?” he asked.

“The paper?”

“The wah moi.”

“Oh,” Erik reached a hand out, “No, I want some.”

Charles waited until Erik looked up to see what the delay was, then pushed the small brown plum out of his mouth with his tongue. It fell. Charles’ hand whipped across to catch it, held it out to Erik.

“Bite it,” he said.

Erik slowly moved forward to gently scrape his teeth along the pit, tearing a piece of flesh away, his lips dragging over the tips of Charles’ fingers. Charles forgot to breathe.

Erik claimed the wah moi and offered it up. 

“Your turn,” he said, and he sounded like he was stepping off a cliff.

Charles wiped his tongue over the wrinkled plum and Erik’s thumb tip, then bit. He could not have stopped staring into Erik’s burning gaze for anything on earth, even though Erik, it seemed, was seeing past his features, directly into his secrets.

“Charles,” said Erik.

“Yes,” said Charles.

“I...” and he loomed over Charles’ chair, tipped up the delicate boy’s chin and reverently tasted the fascinating lips, as succulent as any of the exotic fruit he’d brought Charles over the years.

The tiny footsteps of delight, Charles had experienced ascending his spine earlier, had evolved into an all encompassing tingle, which rang in his ears and blocked out everything that wasn’t him and Erik.

He lifted one hand and grasped Erik’s face, not willing, now or ever, to let go.

Erik’s mouth was lapping at Charles’, a rhythm like the swell of diligent waves and shifting sands. Charles could only open up for him and let out musical, pleading sounds, which Erik immediately, and greedily, swallowed.

Eventually, Erik stopped to suck in oxygen, and Charles was surprised to find himself bundled on Erik’s lap, both arms clinging around his best friend’s neck and Erik’s large hands grasping and releasing on his back like a cat padding its bed.

Charles said, “Erik, I love you, like I’m supposed to love a wife.” And Erik, between lightly nipping random patches of Charles’ face, said, “Me too.”

“Can it always be like this now?” Charles asked, gasping as Erik found a spot under his ear.

“Bloody hell, yes.”

They laughed and rested their foreheads together.

 

However, it couldn’t always be like that because the war to end all war began. Erik packed up his old kit bag but there was no smiling, just desperate kisses, raining on Charles like a tempest, and promises that neither of them knew how to keep.

Erik went to Trentham to train and Charles sat in the garden at three thirty each afternoon and placed a wah moi in his mouth, let the memories of Erik seep into him like the flavour sunk into his tongue. Erik took a supply with him and forced a moment every day to do the same. Even when the meat of the preserved plums had worn away, the stones would still give up the taste of their love made corporeal.

Erik made a friend at camp, Billy, who was jovial and didn’t pry past asking once, “Left a loved one behind?” Erik’s nod and clenched jaw sufficed for an answer.

Then it seemed as if they’d blinked and regenerated at the base of a cliff in Turkey. Erik and Billy climbed the ladders and started running.

Billy yelled, “Take that, you blighters.”

Erik heard ‘Charles’ each time his boots slammed against the ground.

They did their best.

Erik thought, for a minute, there was an invisible wall, so quickly was his body halted, and he was depressed, concertina like, bending at all the joints. Billy’s face hovered above him. Erik tried to get up but couldn’t; couldn’t move or talk or breathe. He needed to get up. He couldn’t die; he’d promised. He started to panic, managing one word, “Charles.” It came out like begging. 

Billy said, “It’s ok, mate. Erik listen. It’s ok. You can let go. I can get you to Charles.”

Erik struggled because Billy couldn’t; couldn’t know and couldn’t mean it.

Then Billy’s eyes flashed yellow and his skin flickered into blue. “It’s me, Erik, it’s Raven. Let go. I’ll bring you to Charles.”

Erik sighed. He stretched to embrace Raven and his body stayed behind in the mud at Gallipoli.

 

Charles was reading in his room, when Wiremu knocked and entered.

“Is it time for the garden?” said Charles, marking his place. Then he stopped, his brain catching up with him.

“Wiremu? You... went to war. What are you doing here?”

Wiremu bent down and collected Charles in his huge shirtsleeved arms and said, in a familiar Patu paiarehe voice, “It’s time for the garden, Moko.”

Charles laughed. “Has it always been you, Raven?”

The large Maori man nodded.

In the gazebo, Raven placed Charles gently on his seat and knelt before him. Skin trembled brown to blue, hair from black to red. She was still a small girl, an ancient but small girl.

She said, “It’s time to come with me, Charles.”

“But Erik...”

“...is in the otherworld waiting.”

Raven blurred as Charles appreciated the meaning of her words.

“Haere mai,” said Raven, “We’ll be tahi ake ake, together forever. We can have tea in the garden every day if you want.”

“Yes,” said Charles.

And they still do.

**Author's Note:**

> Tahi ake ake- together forever,  
> Patu paiarehe- a type fairy, a magical creature who is pale skinned with red hair and lives in the mountains.  
> Taangata- people.  
> Mau mau paki- a mountain near Fairy land.  
> Kaumaatua- elders.  
> Whenua- land.  
> Iwi-atua- supernatural beings.  
> Hongi- traditional greeting or farewell.  
> Haere mai- come.


End file.
